The IDF wants you – or does it?

The idea that Israel’s draft is universal and everyone except the ultra-Orthodox serves in the military is a myth.

By ZEV GOLAN

May 14, 2012 22:34

4 minute read.

An IDF helicopter in the Negev.
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)

Israel’s new national unity government has committed itself to codifying in law
– by August – the question of citizens’ responsibility to serve in the IDF. For
years the ultra-Orthodox have been criticized for not serving. The arrangement
by which they do not serve has meanwhile prevented them from almost ever finding
gainful employment. While in recent years the government has succeeded in
enlisting growing numbers of ultra-Orthodox, this February the High Court
essentially ordered the government to draft thousands of them against their
will.

One of the groups protesting the exemption granted to
ultra-Orthodox seminary students rallies under the banner “freierim,” indicating
that anyone who serves is a fool, but this is meant ironically since they
purportedly all serve. However, a different banner flies over a second protest
movement, one that calls to treat those who serve as professional
volunteers.

Official committees and now the public are asking how to make
army service a responsibility shared by all the nation’s diverse population; or,
the other side of this question, whether the draft is still a
necessity.

These are questions addressed by one of America’s leading
economic thinkers, Milton Friedman, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday
this year and who held the accomplishments of the Jewish state in great
esteem.

Friedman was famous for working in the 1960s to cancel the draft
in the US, and ever after to ensure it would not be reinstated. While many
differences exist between the US and Israel, some of Friedman’s principles are
worthy of consideration.

When Gen. William Westmoreland criticized
Friedman’s support for a volunteer army by saying he did not want to command an
army of mercenaries, Friedman interrupted and asked, “General, would you rather
command an army of slaves?” Westmoreland said he did not want to hear draftees
called slaves; Friedman ended the discussion by saying he did not want to hear
volunteers called mercenaries, but in any case, he was a mercenary professor and
Westmoreland a mercenary general, and all the doctors and lawyers and
shopkeepers who served them were, if they engaged in their work voluntarily,
just as mercenary.

In Friedman’s work against the draft he pointed out
the economic cost to young men of serving and to society of forcing them to
serve.

Back to Israel. During the underground war against the British in
the 1940s, and during the war with the Arabs that followed in 1948, many
ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students voluntarily enlisted. In 1948 they left their
yeshivas to dig trenches – even on Shabbat. One brilliant yeshiva student,
Abraham Ravitz, who joined the Lehi underground later became a member of Knesset
representing the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel party. It is a sad reflection on
Israeli society that today the ultra-Orthodox and others have to be threatened
with imprisonment to get them to serve. Or maybe it is a happy reflection on the
perceived level of threat Israel is facing.

BUT SEVERAL points should be
considered in the debate about the draft in Israel that might lower the level of
bitterness between the different sides, and the volume of the
shouting.

The idea that the Israel’s draft is universal and that everyone
except the ultra-Orthodox serves is a myth.

A recent study by the
Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies shows that nearly 25 percent of draft-age
men never enlist. And another 18% of the men leave the service before their term
is up. Forty percent of women do not enlist. The ultra-Orthodox are not the only
ones not serving.

Reserve service is even less universal. Barely 4% of
eligible Israelis serve their month (more precisely, 26 days) each
year.

Does this mean the IDF is in trouble? On the contrary.

A
committee set up by then-defense minister Shaul Mofaz admitted that “the amount
of manpower conscripted today is higher than necessary” given the technological
means at the army’s disposal and the nature of today’s security work. Another
government committee determined that the army was already being selective in
whom it accepted and what to do with them, and differentiated on the basis of
sex, academic background and other factors.

So the debate about drafting
the ultra-Orthodox is not about Israeli security, it is about social equality.
And with all due respect for the issue of social equality, the army exists to
protect Israel, not to make social policy.

A better solution than
embittering people by forcing them to serve while actually reducing Israeli
security and paying more to do so – would be to pay a normal wage to the
dedicated soldiers the IDF already has. This would encourage the army to use its
soldiers more effectively and remove the stigma of their being called
“freierim.” It would remove a point of contention in Israeli society and allow
more people to join the country’s workforce.

It would also show that most
Israelis want to serve even without being threatened.

The writer directs
the Public Policy Center of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, which is
holding a conference on Religion and Economic Liberty in honor of the centenary
of Milton Friedman’s birth, May 20-23, in Jerusalem.

Sites Of Interest

The Jerusalem Post Customer Service Center can be contacted with any questions or requests:
Telephone: *2421 * Extension 4 Jerusalem Post or 03-7619056 Fax: 03-5613699E-mail: [email protected]
The center is staffed and provides answers on Sundays through Thursdays between 07:00 and 14:00 and Fridays only handles distribution requests between 7:00 and
13:00
For international customers: The center is staffed and provides answers on Sundays through Thursdays between 7AM and 6PM
Toll Free number in Israel only 1-800-574-574
Telephone +972-3-761-9056
Fax: 972-3-561-3699
E-mail: [email protected]